Point of Sale System Defined

The POS is the place where customers complete payment for their goods, or services, purchased with your business.

Perhaps the best definition of a POS is that it is a combination of software and hardware, that allows the merchant to quickly make daily business operation related tasks.

Case Studies

Depending on the industry or category of the business, different companies will use retail management software for different reasons. For example:

Restaurants. Use the software to track the inventory of ingredients and supplies as well as order processing

Jewelers. May require POS software to track repairs as well as quotes and processing sales

Pawn or consignment. Software for this industry is a bit more specialized since these shops don’t own their inventories

Retail POS Solutions

A lot of POS systems can offer retailers a variety of capabilities in one package.

As mentioned in our example above for pawn shops, sometimes a custom capability needs to be built out that can provide more a more specialized solution

In retail, here are some software features that may be necessary to have built into the retail management software:

Inventory management to track product

Sales analytics to track performance

A customer relationship management (CRM) to increase customer loyalty

Accounting for retail-specific payroll, taxes and other accounting related tasks

One Size Does Not Fit All

Retail management software needs to be able to scale accordingly, for the size of the business utilizing it. A small business may only require a basic POS system with limited hardware.

For a business that is medium sized, such as a handful of store locations, there are POS systems that will enable support of multiple locations with analytics to reflect this.

A large, enterprise-class business, say 5 or more locations will need software that can account for complexities like warehousing and shipping logistics.

Advantages of Using Retail Management Software

Believe it or not, a lot of retailers still operate without a POS installed. If that’s the case, you better hope the store manager is a whiz at Excel, since POS can really make one’s life easier.

For example, using retail management software can enable your business to scale.

Key insights provided by the software allow you to track trends, in addition to strengths and deficiencies. Being able to monitor top-selling products to see what your customers are focused on can be invaluable.

Efficiencies made possible by modern software helps provide automation. By automating more redundant tasks, shop owners and managers get to spend more time working directly with customers and employees.

Current Market Trends

There is a lot going on in the enterprise software realm. Some trends to keep an eye on are below:

Inventory control. With advanced inventory control, you can keep on top of vendor inventory and purchase orders so you can keep the shelves stocked

Software as a Service (SaaS). The trend towards SaaS has really impacted just about every retail operation with a web-based system allowing for data to be shared remotely without a large upfront cost

Integration online and offline. The current trend is for retailers to look at their stores as mini distribution centers to avoid over and understocking, which are both really prevalent in retail.

To better stay informed of the latest trends in retail management software check out a blog like the one over at findabusinessthat.com.

Software Vendors

Depending on what size company you operate, this can inform the software provider that you eventually sign on with. Listed below are some retail management software companies that are worth researching:

If you are a small company Comcash, Retail Pro and Microsoft RMS are options to look at.

For a large, integrated suite company look at Retail Anywhere, Celerant, VuePoint OneVue